


Your Friend Is Most Likely Dead

by newredshoes



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: 1950s, Abuse, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Mindwiping, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 20:30:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3222434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newredshoes/pseuds/newredshoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1951, eight years after his first return from certain death, Bucky Barnes meets Peggy Carter again. She came to learn about a Hydra weapon loose on American soil. He came because Hydra needed to run some tests.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Friend Is Most Likely Dead

It’s wet that fall in Washington, raindrops hissing against all the sodden leaves. Howard used to tease her and ask if bad weather made her feel at home, but he’s moved on to other, more pressing poor jokes, when he jokes at all. On balance, he complains. He complains much more than he ever did during the war.

“Not sure why it’s you who has to take this meeting,” he says again as he turns the custom Porsche down a cobbled Georgetown side street. 

“You know perfectly well it’s a favor.” Peggy replies simply out of courtesy for the banter. “If there’s asylum to consider, I’d rather make this call myself.”

“You can still delegate it later.”

“Of course,” she says, looking out the rain-streaked window. He parks roughly, in a hurry. It’s a short walk under drab black umbrellas to the little café, which is fashionable, expensive and discreet. Howard strides to the back and shrugs out of his camelhair coat, grumbling yet again that SHIELD should have set up shop in California.

Amiti is late, but she arrives unhurried, towering. Peggy greets her with a kiss to each sun-dark cheek. “Yonit, what a pleasure to see you here.”

Howard holds out his hand and introduces himself. “Of course,” Amiti says, her voice low and throaty and warm. She slips out of her jacket, which looks borrowed, too wide in the shoulders, and sits so her knees don’t bump the table. Her silk sleeves are buttoned close at the wrist.

“I am so glad we have the chance to meet in person,” she says. “I am only in Washington briefly; my flight to Miami is tomorrow morning.”

“Business or pleasure?” Howard asks, and Amiti smiles.

“A bit of both in Buenos Aires.”

His face relaxes, like he’s courting distraction. “Wonderful city. Give them my name at the San Telmo and ask for Gabriel. He’ll take great care of you.”

“I appreciate the kind offer, thank you.” She turns to Peggy. “I in turn would like to introduce you to somebody. He and I know each other from our mutual pursuits.”

Peggy crosses her ankles. “I’d be very interested to learn more.”

When she’d met Amiti, her name was Perele Luegner, and she’d led raids on Nazi outposts all over Poland until she’d been caught and sent away. Peggy only found out that she’d survived in ‘47, from a look-book of known Haganah operatives. Now Amiti had shifted focus.

“Idan Barak. A good man, a Russian.” She looks between them, chin held high. “I met him at Soldau; he was one of the liberators. I trust him with my life.”

“High praise,” says Peggy, and Amiti drums her fingers slowly on the table.

“He came to America four months ago looking for a certain Kommandant. In the process, he has learned of a terrible Hydra weapon now on American soil.”

Howard shoots forward in his seat. “A Hydra weapon?” He’s quiet enough, but the urgency alone could attract attention. “What kind? Where?”

“A loose one.” Amiti shrugs. “Barak wants to settle here; citizenship will help him blend in better.”

“Whoa, hold on a minute. He thinks he can negotiate with this?” Howard frowns and looks to Peggy. “So he can extranationally, extrajudicially hunt Nazis on American soil?” 

“I am just telling you the facts. He can tell you more.” Amiti lifts her eyebrows. “Which do you prefer? Dead Nazis in the United States, or live Hydra guns on the black market?”

Peggy sips the last of her coffee. “When can he meet?”

“Carter—”

“Tonight,” says Amiti. “I can give you the address. You understand why we must be discreet.”

“Naturally.”

“Out of the question!”

“I’ve got this in hand, Mr. Stark,” says Peggy sharply. She smiles at Amiti. “How wonderful, isn’t it, that promotion keeps us so safe.”

Amiti chuckles. “I am an old dog. The old tricks are much more fun.”

Howard slouches back in his chair, stewing.

*

He insists on driving her to the rendezvous, griping and moaning the entire way that she’s going in without backup. She watches out the window the whole time.

“One Russian in a Maryland suburb,” she finally scoffs. “Have a little respect for me.”

“It’s not respect I’m short on. When is it ever just one Russian?” He squeezes the wheel. “What do we actually know about this guy?”

“That Amiti trusts him,” Peggy says. “And I don’t.”

“I’m calling in backup as soon as I drop you off.”

“How wonderful that will be for you to explain to the secretary of war tomorrow.”

Howard grunts. He never was good at the work of spying. Somehow her favorites never are.

They lose themselves in the serpentine street plan. Someday there will be trees and parks and good schools, but it’s early days for this development, and most of the lots are empty or half-built. Howard pulls up in front of Amiti’s address, a nice little split-level with all the lights on. “You make the call if things go south,” he says, earnest. “You’re director of SHIELD, and this isn’t the war.”

She knows better than to tell him, that it’s always somebody’s war somewhere. Instead, she pulls open her purse to show off her support: a wireless, two smoke bombs, the Browning Hi-Power Lightweight. “Will you stop fussing?”

His mouth twitches, still downturned. “Not likely.”

She sighs. “I will check in with you at 10 o’clock. If things go south, I’ll ask for my coat.”

“Or you’ll just yell for backup.”

She checks her lipstick in the rearview. “If it comes to that.”

“Ten o’clock.” He wags his own two-way.

“You’ve been in your labs for too long.” She smiles and climbs out of the car. She waits to ring the house’s doorbell, pointedly, until he drives away. Howard. He doesn’t like to lose sight of things. Impossible to predict when and which.

A pleasant young woman answers. She’s bound her hair back, girlish, with a cream-yellow ribbon. “I’ve come to see about the books,” Peggy says.

“Of course! Please come in.” Her hostess introduces herself as Dottie; her husband Jim came home for dinner but went out again. She’s made a lovely home, with lovely curtains that leak light into the dark. Present in the background, a girl and a boy, both younger than 6, homecoming arrivals; they play on the stairs with sleek toy tin airplanes. Dottie offers coffee (from the supermarket) and cookies (most of a stick of butter), and they chat for an hour about films. Peggy quite enjoyed _A Streetcar Named Desire_ , while Dottie was very concerned by _The Day the Earth Stood Still._

She’s reminded, as she sometimes is: This must be what it’s like, to know people who were never in the war.

Once Peggy promises to look into the new television show with Lucille Ball, Dottie takes a pad from the side table and prints another address, lightly enough not to leave dents.

“That’s the library.” She holds out the slip of paper. “It should still be open.”

As Dottie gives her walking directions, Peggy checks the clock: only 8:45. The rain has stopped, but there’s a sharp wetness in the air that gets in the lungs. She walks purposefully down the curving sidewalks. No cars go by. Every household is home for the night. 

The two-way hisses in her purse. She swears briefly and switches off the sound.

The address on Dottie’s note is a model house with a sign out front. It abuts the woods the development company is ripping out to build neighborhoods. The windows are dark. Peggy straightens; a shiver scales her spine.

The lawn squelches as she scouts the perimeter. Just one set of footprints going in through the back. Nothing to be done about the covering trees, bare as they are. The front door is unlocked. She wipes her shoes on the welcome mat. The heels clack on the wood floor inside. 

As agreed, she flicks on the light in the front hall. Nothing moves. She can see into the kitchen at the back of the house. A living room and a dining room branch off to one side, with stairs on the other leading, presumably, to bedrooms. She reaches into her bag and wraps her fingers around the Browning.

“Mr. Barak,” she calls, keeping her voice level. “I’m a friend of Yonit Amiti’s.”

A light in the kitchen switches on. She can see clear counters, linoleum tile, a brand new oven, a breadbox. Peggy relaxes her shoulders and steps forward. 

The gun is at her temple before she can check around the kitchen doorway. “Put your purse down,” says a gravelly male voice. “Hands empty, where I can see them.”

A numbness washes over Peggy. Colors seem to wash out too, and she can hear her blood thumping between her ears. She doesn’t move, save to turn her head enough to confirm it.

Bucky Barnes’ gun doesn’t waver, but his face does. 

It’s his face, his voice, right out of a newsreel. “Hands where I can see them,” he says. That muscle in his jaw twitches. His hair is freshly cut, and he’s shaved, but his coat is tattered surplus. She smells soap, sweat, mud, a chemical undertone. Her whole body starts to shake.

“Sgt. Barnes—”

“I’m not going to ask again.” There’s a coldness in his eyes that she remembers, that he’d put away when he cared who saw it.

She swallows, to refocus her breathing. She wants to rush him, to grip him and test that he’s real. Her hand stays on the Browning in her purse. “If you know me, you’ll put that down.” 

“I do know you.” A line appears between his brows. “Peggy,” he says at last. His voice pops and crackles.

She holds herself very still.

He pulls the gun back and bows his head.

Somewhere between her ribcage and her crown, she thinks: It’s eight years, almost precisely eight years since she’d met him at last, after all those stories. The first time he’d walked back from certain death.

Here he is, just like he’d always been: harrowed, haggard in a way he could never shed. Her heart-muscle bashes at her insides.

It cascades out of her, the cry she smothers, the urge to twist away. Barnes stares, startled. She sags against the doorframe. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, weeping, as if she’d prepared some speech she’s forgotten. That he was alive and they just assumed. That no one went looking for him. That his best friend never knew. That he’d been wherever he’d been, away. That all she can give him is tears and “I’m so sorry.”

He hasn’t moved. “For what?”

Peggy shakes her head. Her hand trembles in her purse; she drops the Browning, which rattles against her smoke grenades. Barnes switches his pistol to his other hand. 

“Sorry I scared you,” he says, and holds out his arm. She lets him come closer.

When she leans into his right shoulder, it’s him, it’s Barnes, solid, hard, warm, alive.

She stares at the breadbox on the counter. “Where’s Barak?”

“That’s me.” Barnes sets his gun down. A wisp of his old wryness. “I can show you the papers.”

She’s still shaking, an animal lack of control. “Is that where you’ve been? The Middle East?”

His chest rises and falls. Peggy looks at his face again. He’s terribly pale.

But this has to be Barnes. She knows him, the form of his mouth, the deep-set eyes, his jaw. 

She still can’t place that scent that clings to him. It’s not formalin. It’s nothing a man would bear by choice. Certainly not him.

“You’ll have to forgive me.” She sucks in a deep breath through her mouth. “This is all such a shock—” She steps back and keeps up eye contact as she roots around in her purse.

Barnes grabs his pistol, so fast she freezes. “What are you doing?”

Peggy clicks the button that brings her two-way to life, transmitting. “Just my handkerchief,” she says, and holds hers up. Barnes watches her hands, his body just trigger discipline. A string of justifications bubbles up in someone else’s voice, a list of hurts. _He’ll be different when he’s better._

“This place isn’t secure,” she says, spring-loaded too. “Let me call Howard. I can have us somewhere safe—”

Barnes pulls back. “You agreed to meet me alone.”

“I have.” She enunciates. “Sgt. Barnes, I have no backup.”

The room goes quieter. Barnes hesitates. His eyes flick away, down and to the right. He interrupts himself. “We need to talk.”

Peggy lifts her chin; it keeps her from frowning. “Of course,” she says. The ugly edge of that smell again, dizzying. “I’ll just put my coat away. I may need it later.”

He tails her, close and wordless, the gun still in hand. There’s a hall closet by the stairs. She hangs the coat on a peg, scanning the points of access. The living room is too vulnerable, the dining room a bottleneck. Barnes is alive, and lying to her.

His focus has slipped again. He’s knit his brow. “You really…” Peggy waits, but he shakes it off. “There’s no water here,” he says. “They’ve got it furnished, but the pipes aren’t turned on yet.”

“Let’s not stay, then.”

Ruefully: “You’re going to keep saying that, aren’t you.”

“And why not leave, Sergeant?”

“You’ve, um.” He scratches his hairline, both hands gloved, the gloves much nicer than the coat. She wonders if they still have his fingerprints on file. “You should tell me more,” he says.

“About what?”

He leans against the banister. “I heard it was an airplane.”

Oh.

It was so quiet, how Steve ended. Phillips had cleared Morita from the control room, and she wept alone with the radio static. Howard had said the same of his time on the water, how quiet the Arctic was, how you’d never know the world was moving on. Steve hadn’t been himself, after the train. Light bent differently around him the day Bucky didn’t come back.

Howard also, at that. Howard had used up some well against loss that year, and could never risk replenishing it.

“Maybe we’d still have him,” she says, “if we’d gone looking for you then.”

Barnes looks away.

“I don’t remember him,” he says. Peggy goes rigid; his voice comes like polyvinyl, with cracks and pops. “I’ve read things and I’ve seen pictures, but everyone talks about him and there’s just. Nothing.” He gestures. “A hole.” His focus sharpens. “But you cried when you saw me. And you knew him.”

“I knew him too, yes.”

She remembers—how did she not recall this?—how fluid his face could get, how every thing he felt could flicker over his features if he wasn’t careful. Her heart pounds sharp and tight. She came to learn about a weapon on American soil.

“I remember things,” he says. “I don’t know how, but I remember things. We don’t have much time, though, so you have to tell me more.”

The decision comes instantly, no matter how compromised he is. “If we don’t have time, I won’t stay. Let me bring you in, Barnes.”

“That won’t work.” He hangs his head. “I’ll get found. That’s what happens, I get found.”

Peggy reaches into her purse. She grips the two-way and flips the transmitting switch. “Stark, stand by for address. Come at once—”

Barnes grabs the radio and hurls it against a far wall. She’s already dropped her purse and is throwing her first punches. His gun flies out of his hand at her kick, somewhere into the living room. He blocks her only with his right side. The fight has barely started when he backs her hard into a wall.

“I’m sorry.” He’s not even panting. His weight on his forearm, still pressed beneath her collarbone. That smell. Peggy breathes as deeply as she can. “Please,” he says, “why don’t you just tell me?” He backs off her, reaches into one of his pockets, one that would be a good place to keep a knife. Instead, he holds out a photograph. “This happened. There’s a picture. I don’t remember this. How do I remember you?”

It’s a promotional photo, from one of Steve’s old war films. Peggy blinks. There’s Steve, tall and broad in his USO costume, the one he hated. A gruff-looking actor in a general’s uniform admires the medal he’s just hung around Steve’s neck. The picture has a deep crease down the middle; on the other side of it stands the sidekick, Steve’s loyal ordinary pal. There he is, dark hair, dark eyes, dark jacket, a trusty rifle slung over his shoulder. Makeup. A big supportive grin.

“Who told you this was you?”

He opens his mouth, starts to say something else, then glances away. “I’ve been awake three days.”

She touches the edge of the photo. “That’s not you, but you know that. You’ve known that all along.” She can feel her words piling up behind her teeth; she feels this beginning to work. “Come with me, Barnes. Howard will be on his way now that he’s heard trouble. We can get you someplace secure and find out what’s happened. I have photos, film, evidence, things you can trust. Other people who know you. We can sort things out at SHIELD.”

“SHIELD?” There it is, another ghost around his lips. “Huh.”

It’s not professional to hope like this. The hope stings her, though, pricking the back of her neck, her ribs.

“Barnes,” she says, then, because she never has and this is her chance: “Bucky.”

“Okay,” he says, and nods. “Okay, I want to come with you.” It floods her, suddenly. He's coming back. He's alive. His friends have him again. He fishes in the breast pocket of his greatcoat. “You were there when I came back, so.”

He's not making sense, but he will, once they've helped him. Once he's back. “What’s that?” She draws her Browning from her purse, and notes his approving look.

“The first time.” He finds a small device, there in his coat, and squeezes it in his left hand; the device crunches, crumples, falls away. “The first time I was on the table.”

At that, her stomach goes cold. 

“We’d gotten out,” he says, “and then there was a march, and then we were home, when we got to you.” He glances down, then back at her. “Is that right?”

He rattles something else loose, something later: Phillips narrowing his eyes, asking her to watch him. Learn why he alone kept pace with Rogers, to verify his impossible shots, his uncanny kills.

“Barnes,” she says slowly, “have there been more experiments?”

She’s already turning when the front door explodes. Silently, without pause, Barnes flings his left arm in front of her, yanks them both into the dining room. The model home swarms with uniforms, black armor and dull, dark guns.

“Stand down, soldier!” a man shouts. They’re surrounded, pinned into a corner face to face. Peggy grips the Browning, eyes wide, ready. She and Barnes are close enough to touch.

“Good work, pal, nicely done,” says a new voice, a man’s voice, thick Brooklyn accent. Barnes flinches through his whole body. His jaw tightens. Slowly, he reaches for her gun. Peggy looks past him, at the wall of rifles. She came here to learn about a Hydra weapon.

He doesn’t look away. His face hides nothing. She lets him. She lets him take the pistol.

“Hand her over now,” the Brooklyn man says. “Just like you agreed, soldier.”

Barnes moves so fast, she hardly sees what happens next.

*

The radio sputters and hisses. There’s Howard crouching over her, patting her cheek and muttering, “Jesus, Peggy, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

She jerks awake, upright, ready to flee. “Shh, shh, it’s all right.” Howard keeps his hand on her shoulder, firm pressure. She stares at him, fixes on his mustache; her vision swims. She squeezes her eyes shut.

The room stinks of blood. A couch. She’s on a couch. Someone has draped her coat over her. Her mouth is dry. This is real, whatever it is. “What time is it?”

“Nine-forty. The two-way sounded bad. We got here as fast as we could.”

They’re the only ones in the room still alive; she spots limbs, stains. Upstairs, a woman sobs and keens, her grief skidding.

“Dottie,” says Howard. “Guess she found your contact. I didn’t know where you’d gone, I had to ask her. She brought me here. We should never do this again, Carter.”

“Do what?”

“Don’t be cute with me.”

Peggy frowns, glances down and to the right. It’s empty. The whole day is empty, eaten by something, a chemical burn. “I don’t remember coming here.”

“You—the Nazi hunters.” He searches her face. “The asylum guy? Christ, this ring a bell with you?”

Peggy reaches under the coat, to massage the pain in her sternum. Something is already bruising there. She feels ill, weak, electrocuted. 

“Someone killed 14 black ops and fled the scene,” he says, his words shoving to outrun each other. “I never want to have to check a thing like that again. How you feeling, pal? We should get out of here.”

“Who was my contact?” 

Five men right here on the floor: no insignia, no wasted shots to take them out.

Howard flinches. “Carter, we can’t stay, get up.” He tugs on her arm, moves to support her.

“You heard me on the radio,” she croaks. She grips his jacket. “You heard us both.”

“I don’t know who you met. I just heard a little. Gotta fix that transmitter, it was awfully muffled. Might have been interference too. Should have tested it more before it went in the field. Was your guy bugged?” He only just meets her eye. “We were too late to catch him. Couldn’t have done a damn thing anyway. I mean, look at this.”

She should know this. It’s too important not to know. This moment is already slipping through her fingers. “You must have been taping it,” she tries.

“It’s gone,” he snaps, and she reels. He’s harrowed, haggard. “What good is looking? There was nothing there to get back.”

There: Howard returning from the boat, Howard, whose projects always work; Howard and his rich man’s heart broken, uncomprehending of irreplaceable things.

I can’t do it again, he’d said when he sold the vessel. He’d been drunk; she’d found him drunk in his lab. It’ll kill me, he’d said. Not kill-kill, but. What next, anyway? We’d just bury him. We’d just. We gotta live, Carter. This ain’t the war.

He hefts her up, herds her away from the site, into his waiting car. The police will find Dottie, and come to their own conclusions. SHIELD had nothing to do with this; they can clean it up in the morning. Not even the secretary of war will know. “This was suicide, Carter,” Howard murmurs on the way out. “You can’t do this anymore.”

She huddles into the coat, slung about her shoulders. There’s a scent there, faintly, that she can’t name, that makes her want to bolt. Peggy slips one hand into her pocket. It’s a folded photograph, an old promotional still from one of Steve’s movies: the hero receiving his medals. It’s battered and creased, thoroughly examined, smudged with fingerprints. Peggy has never seen it before.

“We should wire Amiti,” Howard says as he revs the engine. “Tell her we were too late.”

They pull away. She runs her thumb over the sidekick’s face, some session actor, and peers out the window, searching.

*

This is familiar, how it begins: encased, scrabbling, doused in sweat, convulsing. The hiss of gas. Blackness. Limpness. 

“Well.” Fingers prying open one eye. “It’s not philosophical now.”

He comes to on his side, one knee pulled close to his chest. Heavy wool blankets, easy breathing. Everything about this is wrong.

He rips off the blankets and rockets into a defensive stance. He’s clothed, in drab pajamas. No shoes. No equipment. No table. He breathes hard. Three doors, the bed against the last wall. Something should come next. Something comes next.

A buzz at the door, a signal. Attention. Only one person slips in: not in uniform, not a doctor. Civilian clothes. Dark hair, easy gait. Speaking English. Unarmed.

He frowns. The words skid and slip between his ears.

“No? Listen, it’s all right, you just woke up. Sorry I startled you. I’m Mike.”

Nonstandard. Native speaker.

A laugh. “Hey, at ease, soldier. We’re on the same side here. How you doing?”

He tries to speak, but it comes out garbled, mumbled. Finally: “Mission brief?”

Mike laughs. “Yeah, soon, but let’s get you cleaned up first, all right?”

A shower, alone. He’s left to clean himself. The water is warm, doesn’t scald or skin. He stands there under it, doesn’t know why. He has to be briefed. He stands there under it. His shoulder, his back, loosen.

Civilian clothes. Trousers, a belt, a button-up shirt. Shoes. Mike brings in a barber. He chatters, one-sided, fills his ears with English. The barber cuts his hair, shaves him, doesn’t say a word. Sweeps the hair away.

“Look at that, you’re a new man,” Mike says. A mirror. His face.

“Are you briefing me?”

“Yeah, soon, soon. You hungry? You want some chow?”

The question. He waits. Mike sees his mistake.

“Right. Let’s go get some food.”

Unfamiliar hallways. He hasn’t been to this base before. No one looks twice at him. His arm under a blue jacket. He’s awake. There must be a mission.

Base food. A tray. A cafeteria. No one pays him any mind. American English all around.

“Army food never changes,” says Mike cheerfully. “Even when you’re out.”

There must be a mission. Guard up. No one attacks them. No test here. He eats: meat with gravy. Carrots. Potatoes.

Mike hums to himself as they walk through the halls. He can predict the tune. There might be words.

_—known and I’ve known—_  
 _until I first—you … lonesome—_

Doggerel. No.

Eye contact in his peripheral vision. He tenses, locates: approaching, young woman, skinny, oversized gray-purple outfit, pushing a bin on wheels, brooms. Cleaning staff. She smiles at him. Eyes forward.

Next, a small gymnasium: bleacher seats, wood. Pine-Sol.

(The smell of pine; balanced on high branches. Rifle, cold in both hands. His jacket is blue. Hearing men below, German. Must be the snow that makes their voices so clear.)

His vision washes out, and he freezes. Adrenaline. Fear response. No one remarks on it. He’s waved over.

A woman, reserved and unimpressed, in charge of working the arm. He’s not introduced to the men on the bleachers. It calms him, gives him something to do. First: training, repetitions, new weapons. Eight men attack him. Others watch, scientists, mission heads. He hears them; they don’t think he does.

“—no reason to fear. It’s been completely severed.”

“—your faith in this proof of concept. If anything goes—”

He lays them out, all eight of his attackers, when he’s bored of them. The observers go quiet.

He searches the bleachers again. One man, nicely dressed. Round glasses, a little smile. No introductions.

He sleeps ramrod straight that night. That tune hovers just out of reach, words tumbling through his head if he shakes it just right. _And this—old world seemed—new to me—_

In the morning, a new man, a man in uniform. Easygoing, English-speaking, a golden blond. Frank. (Like them: slacks. Shoes. Button shirt. Sweater. He combed his hair this morning. Doesn’t look right, but the part is in the right place.)

“They might not know who you are,” says Frank, nodding toward the door. The rest of the base. “But I do.” He grins. “Our finest volunteer! Really looking forward to working with you.”

Small room. One point of entry. No mirrors, no windows. One table, two chairs, side by side. He’s already sat like that at the mess. Eating without watching. A folder on the table. He waits, squeezing one fist.

“Hey,” says Frank. “Have a seat. Let’s talk about your mission.”

He sits because it’s an order, but his back is tight. He watches the folder from the corner of his eye. Frank flips it open. A dossier.

“It looks simple, I know, but we need you on it. The objective is detain, not kill. That means undercover. You good for that? Ready to learn something new?”

“Sir.” He doesn’t have something else to say.

“Hey.” Frank claps a hand on his shoulder, just behind the seam on the flesh. “Ease up, pal. I’m your support on this. It’s okay.”

Permission. A trap or an order. He scans the open folder. Photos on top: a woman, men, all in uniform, nonstandard.

Frank is watching him. He talks, easy, in control. “Margaret Carter, director of SHIELD. A big problem for us. Close associate of this man, alias Captain America, deceased. Another close associate of theirs went MIA, presumed KIA, during the war. Take a look at this.”

Another photograph: black and white, the two dead men, receiving an award from the Americans.

“Pretty good match, huh?”

He picks up the photo. One man, square-jawed, fair-haired, bigger than he should be. He frowns. The other, cocky, pleased to be there. “You think I look like this man?”

“Sgt. James Barnes,” says Frank, breezily. “It’s been years since she saw him, and she’ll tell herself anything to think you’re him. You just have to get close.”

The man he’s supposed to be: they didn’t cut his hair that way. The part’s in the same place, though.

“Close enough for what?” he says slowly.

Frank smiles, a wide, bright smile. “Just keep her talking.”

Heart rate up. Interaction. No guns. A person. 

“Look, I get it. This isn’t your normal mission. We think you’ve got potential, though. If you can do undercover work for us too, we get the upper hand in a big, big way. Really changes the game for us. You up for it, soldier?”

Every second of silence is the wrong answer. “Why not suppress her and call for extraction?” he says. Because.

“You have your orders, buddy.” Frank smiles. “I know you can do it.”

He comes back to the photo, Barnes and Rogers. He folds the picture in half, only looks at Rogers. Garish costume, even in monochrome. Hair neatly combed. A self-effacing smile. Isn’t this rich.

Buck, if you knew the half of it.

Copper tang on the roof of his mouth. Eyes dilate: panic response. Measure the breathing. Nothing comes. He unclenches his fist, unfolds the picture. Barnes pleased to be wearing the medal. Standing beside Rogers, not with him. Buck. He checks. That’s not in the file.

He staggers up. Vision whiting out. Words. Frank. Dossier on the table. People in the halls. Out of the way. His right fist a ball.

The long straight corridor. Trees. Pine and mud. The gun cold in both hands. Irregular column, the long march. You’re late.

“Hey! Hey, soldier, what’s the trouble?”

He presses into a crook in the hallway. The song in his head is a fly he can’t see. _And so—racked my—hoping to—all the things that you do to me._

You don’t like music?

When he opens his eyes, his knuckles are covered in plaster. There’s a hole in the wall and a crowd shielding him from prying eyes.

“Hey, pal,” says Mike, hands out.

A click. Frank, closing a small black case, hardshell.

He’s in trouble. Compliance. Terrible pain.

“C’mon, huh?” Mike, a gentler smile, one hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go get you cleaned up. Tell me what happened.”

The crowd falls back, disperses like someone spoke an order.

Fear, he says. Uncertainty. But he’s got them to help him. No, not the pictures. Just the mission. Never done undercover before.

He wakes gasping from a dream of a fall. Clings to the blankets, the mattress, the sheets. The mission will fail. They’re not giving him enough information. He’ll have to kill her. No one taught him. It’s what he knows how to do. A light overhead blinks; he studies it, the curve of glass around it, until he drops back into sleep.

In the morning, he sees that none of his doors lock from the inside.

To hell with this, he decides. He’ll scout it himself. What they won’t give him, he’ll find. No other choice. Never was.

He lies in bed. No one comes for him. The light is still up there on the ceiling. He folds his arms behind his head. It seems like a Sgt. James Barnes thing to do. Whoever’s watching him, this is practice. He has to fool her long enough. He closes his eyes, sees what his face will do.

Margaret Carter. No. Choosey, but he can’t fault her taste. Looks like a million bucks in red. Maybe she has a friend.

Opens his eyes. Turns out it’s a smile, slots right in. Lazy, crooked. Only he knows why.

Breakfast in the mess. He’s getting to like the routine, coming here where no one looks at him and slipping away in private. Mike and Frank nowhere to be seen. He settles in a seat in a defensible corner. Others look his way, but he doesn’t give them anything to watch. Eggs, potatoes, sausages. Army food never changes, even when you’re out. 

A woman brings her tray to the table nearest him. She steals a glance and smiles before she sits. Young. Nice smile. Nice eyes.

The janitor.

“Hi.”

She smiles again. “Hello.”

“Can I join you?”

“Of course.”

He hides the left hand. Finds himself smiling without thinking about it. “Maybe you can help me with something.”

She holds her hand in front of her mouth, her nose. She’s not chewing. She’s a little less coy. “Sure, okay.”

He holds out the picture for her, folded again, Rogers only. He’s carrying it with him now; no one has asked about it. “What do you know about this?”

“Oh! Captain America, yeah. I had the biggest crush on him.” She taps the photo with a red-painted nail, chipped. “I never saw that one.”

The white jacket at the next table over chews more slowly. Listening. Press on. This is important.

“He was famous?”

She laughs. “Where were you during the war?” A snicker. “No, never mind, everyone’s so spooky around here.”

“Ha,” he says. Then: “He died, though.”

“Yeah. Real shame. I was just a kid, of course.”

He pulls the photo back. A civilian nearby gets up and walks purposefully toward the office wing. “What happened?” he says.

“The airplane.” A line appears between her eyebrows. “You really don’t know? He crashed in the Arctic somewhere.”

“I must have missed that,” he murmurs. 

“People thought we’d lose the war,” she says.

“Hey, there.” A hand on her shoulder. He tenses, chooses his escape, stays down. Mike gives them both a reassuring smile. “Free time’s up. Let’s go to the briefing room, soldier. Miss, would you mind coming with us?”

She looks back down at her tray, her breakfast untouched, but rises. He doesn’t want to follow. His feet move but he’s being dragged. Other men join them in the hall, guards. Copper tang on the roof of his mouth. Mike offers pleasant conversation, but the janitor only makes nervous replies.

In the briefing room, one of the guards produces a syringe from a small black case. At a nod from Mike, he plunges it into the woman’s sternum. She collapses with a cry.

“Field wipe,” says Mike, looking him in the eye. “For when we need to burn assets. She’ll be fine, but she’s done here. We’ve got to protect you, soldier.”

Another guard drags the woman away. One of her shoes dangles loose, in danger of slipping off.

“But I’m dangerous,” he says, quiet, confused. There had been no threat. Measure the breathing.

“You are.” Mike smiles and pats him on the shoulder, the metal one. “But we’re more dangerous. That’s what’s needed to protect you. Understand? We have to be.”

“Okay,” he says, more softly than his racing heart. Mike isn’t bluffing. He knows it, deeper than he can speak it.

“Let’s talk about your mission,” says Mike, and sits down at the table. The only other seat is across, not beside, so he takes it. “Tell me what you know about Barnes,” Mike says. “What are you going to know for Carter?”

He reels off facts as easily as weapon specs: dates, units, relationships, special skills. “Rogers died so soon after,” he says. “Why would he do that?”

Mike shrugs. “It was war. You tell me.”

He knits his brow. “He had no reason to get himself killed. His side was winning.”

“Even Captain America can get himself killed, kid. You know wars don’t pick and choose.” Mike procures another file. “I got your second cover right here. This is what we need to lure Carter out in the open. How’s your Russian? Still good?”

Later in the morning, a physical. They measure him. He doesn’t resist. They let him dress himself when they’re satisfied: trousers. Boots. Button shirt, rolled up to the elbows. Gloves. That’s all they give him.

Off in the corner, the doctor and Mike: “You want him undercover, you change up that suspensive medium or you wait,” the doctor says. “He’s a walking mothball.”

He pretends not to listen. Others watching. Their finest volunteer.

Frank gives him an old coat. He holds up a small device and tucks it into the breast pocket. “This is a new transmitter. We can’t track you with the backup you’ll need and stay concealed. This sends us your location while we zero in and extract. That’s why you’ve got to keep her talking. Got it? You don’t need to do anything.”

“Just keep her talking.”

Frank smiles and pats the pocket. “Look at this kidder.”

The sun is not up yet. They drive on the right side of the road off the base. American English on the signs: Brandywine, Cheltenham, Rosaryville.

Mike drops him off near a construction site. No one watching. The suburb has no shops, no offices, no alleys, no high places. Just paved streets and new houses set at arm’s length. It’s too new for good cover. He sits in a car, in an open garage across the street. Somewhere on him, the beacon must be doing its job. Should have been room for a radio somewhere.

It’s drizzling, and the light is low. The woman welcomes the mark at the front door. They kiss. They kiss again. He gives her a keepsake, a ribbon for her hair, yellow. He ties it for her and kisses her forehead. Is that how to greet Carter?

Idan Barak and the American woman stay away from windows until he leaves.

He strolls alongside the mark on the sidewalk. This would be much less conspicuous in a city. “I’m looking for an umbrella,” he says in Russian.

“Don’t be a jackass,” Barak says, in English, through a smile. “Anyone could hear you.”

He replies in kind. “Where can we get dry?”

The mark nods. “Follow me.”

Barak lets down his guard inside the model house. “You said you had information,” he says. “Tell me about the Hydra weapon.”

He snaps the neck, a moment’s work. The body he lays out on a bed upstairs. Too bad, for the American woman. This man gave her a ribbon. Something to remember him by.

Time to be Bucky Barnes, American sergeant. It settles into him, a gun in the crook of his arm.

He pulls out the photograph as he waits, rumpled now from his pocket. Rogers and Barnes. They don’t look close; the shot is perfunctory. He squints. Terrible uniform quality. No armor, no reinforcement. How did Rogers live long enough to go down in a plane just before the end? Who was looking out for him?

He’s alone with these thoughts.

Late: High heels on the front porch. Margaret Carter. (No, not.)

She lets herself in. He presses himself against the wall, pistol in hand. He flicks on the light. Hard shoes on the floor. A red dress, he thinks. Dancing. Singing. No one told him that. Just him. Just him.

*

“That’s all of them, is it?”

Peggy tosses aside the rifle she’d lifted from one of the dead. He’s still standing there, looking at what they did. The sleeve is all shot up. She looks alive. Sure of the world. Cold wash from his neck down. Panic response. The world opens up on all sides. Look what they did.

“Your gun is here somewhere,” he says. Numb, suddenly. “I gotta find it.”

“Leave it,” she says, and he wants to; the order means relief. “Listen to me,” she says. “We’ll walk out together, and we’ll walk casually. Do you understand? We have to go meet Howard.”

A safe place. SHIELD. How’d they get him to her? They must. He’s here. There’s a way in.

“Barnes, where are you?”

“I’m with you,” he says.

This was not clean. He’d finished with knives. Not before Frank, though. Frank hadn’t gotten past the living room. 

He bends to root through Frank’s jacket.

“Barnes, we can’t—”

Her hand on his shoulder. A soft clicking; the plates shift. A glaze of horror. “What is that?”

He rises, pockets his right hand, strips off the glove. Peggy takes the metal fingers. Pressure. Warmth. “Oh,” she murmurs, and too much shows in her face. “Hydra.” He waits for what happens next. She curls her hand in his. “I saw you. I heard—I heard bullets.”

The sleeve is all shot up. Shielded them both.

He bows his head. “It’s dangerous for you if I don’t come.”

She doesn’t look at the bodies. “For you too, I think.”

He knows. He knows.

“I’ll get found.” He closes his hand in his pocket. “That’s what they do.”

“They won’t.” Ferocious. Clear-eyed. “We’re very good at what we do.”

“They’re dangerous.” It catches in him. “They have to be.”

He sees it. They don’t let her in the mess. She doesn’t get a room with blankets. Something comes after.

Howard Stark will be here soon.

He pulls her close, behind the ribs; he steadies her when he plunges the syringe into her chest. She sags noiselessly against him, her cheeks, her knuckles white. The whites of her eyes. When he looks at her face again, it’s slack, impersonal. Asleep, not dead, not betrayed. A field wipe. She’s done here. She’ll be fine.

He lays her out on the couch, sets her purse beside her, finds her Browning, drops it back inside. Takes her coat from the closet, holds it for a moment. 

The drizzle has let up to a fine mist. He vanishes into the wood that abuts the property. 

He shakes as he walks.

The base is quiet. He walks right in the front door before the guards are on him. They march him down, past the darkened mess, full of empty tables, past the room where they let him wake up, down toward the loading docks. There’s a lab set up there, scientists and observers waiting.

“Ah,” says Mike. “So he does slink home.”

Four guns pointing at him. Coat stripped, button-up shirt, shoes, pants, all of it.

“Killed my entire team and let the target get away,” says Mike. No friendly accent now. “Have anything to say for yourself?”

Peggy wept to see him. She can’t know to look.

“Don’t encourage it,” says one scientist. The scientist. Round glasses, a mannered sneer. “You heard everything. The evidence is unequivocal, even without Carter’s help. The wipes can be breached.”

Zola. Zola. The scientist has a name he knows. No one told him that. The first time he was on the table. He opens his mouth. They see him looking.

“This was useless. Discard the test protocol,” Zola snaps. “Revert to usual course.”

Guns pressed to his temple, to his torso, to his skin. They lash him to a chair.

This is familiar, how it ends: encased, straining, rimed with ice, convulsing. The hiss of gas. Blackness.

*

Rather than the bloodless condolences the business requires, what Peggy wants to tell Amiti is this:

Of course they spent the first day of 1945 poring over the intel they’d pried from Rouen. The mission had ended that morning, and the boys were running roughshod over HQ with their New Year’s celebrations. Dugan and Morita tried to ply her with some calvados. Falsworth had traded hats with Dernier and giggled every time someone failed to point it out.

She found Barnes Lindy-Hopping with Pvt. Lorraine to a crackling station that was not the authorized use for SSR radios. Despite months, more than a year of big talk, Peggy had never seen him moving like that: one hand behind Lorraine’s ribs, coasting and swinging over the war room floor. She watched with an appraising eye as he guided her, goaded her, let her get close.

“How about that right partner, Agent Carter?” he said, because of course he’d noticed. Lorraine smirked, a little flighty too, to be caught, but she kept dancing.

Peggy tipped the folder she carried toward her chest. “Let me guess. I ought to loosen up?”

Barnes let Lorraine arc away from him, their bodies both opening up before drawing back together. He looked younger than she’d ever known him. “I’m saying I was two-time champion at the Meridian on Graham Avenue,” he said. “You might have yourself some fun.” 

The song faded out, and the Andrews Sisters came on. “Oh nuts, this rhythm!” Lorraine said, laughing, and Barnes let her bow out with a graceful dip. He really was quite good, utterly in control of himself in a way she had to admire. When he smiled at her, that was him, the man Steve thought the finest friend in the world.

“They’re telling me it’s a whole new year, Agent.” He held out a hand. “What do you say? Are you up for this one?”

“You're really swell, I have to admit you deserve expressions that really fit you,” sang Patty Andrews. The beats were simple, once you understood them.

“Perhaps another time,” she said. “I’m looking for Col. Phillips.”

“Holed up with Steve and Gabe in his office,” said Barnes, ruefully.

“Ah.” She nodded. “Well, I won’t keep you.”

Barnes grinned at her. “Hey, 1945. Who'd have thought?”

Lorraine bumped her hip against his. “Any resolutions, Sarge?”

He didn’t take his eyes off Peggy. “Sure. A whole lot more dancing.”

She remembers passing his rifle, propped neatly in a corner, as she left. She remembers his blue jacket as something he simply wore, rather than a fact he inhabited. The memory troubles her, though she tells Amiti instead that Barak was dead all along.

 _We were too late,_ she types, then unspools the paper. That’s what Howard said. She has no other means of knowing. Barak had been dead the whole time. 

Peggy begins a new letter. She means to begin a new letter. She holds the discarded sheet in her hand, grasping along the edge of it.

**Author's Note:**

> The song Bucky can't remember, of course, is ["Bei Mir Bist du Schon."](http://youtu.be/EGveTSQbH30)
> 
> I've been wanting to write this story in some form or another since [late August](http://newredshoes.dreamwidth.org/2044884.html); it was only with the help of many phenomenal people that it actually came to be. Endless thanks to andibeth82 for her cheerleading and co-flailing; to Adiva and Kaydeefalls, for their excellent staging advice; to theladyscribe, for her notes; to Olivia Circe, for her fabulous beta and encouragement; to kvikindi, for her actionable hardassery, her engagement and excitement. Thank you all, immensely.


End file.
